


Deserving

by thedevilchicken



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Ghosts, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-26 08:14:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20739080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Jack's dead, but that doesn't mean he's gone.





	Deserving

**Author's Note:**

  * For [YunaBlaze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/YunaBlaze/gifts).

Jack the Ripper is dead. 

He died four years ago back in Lambeth Asylum and Jacob's sure that's what happened. He was there at the time, after all. He heard the fight, though it was muffled by the cell door. He saw the body when Evie dragged it inside, away from prying eyes. He played his part in Frederick's cover-up after that. He _knows_ Jack's dead. 

Jack the Ripper is dead. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean he's gone. And honestly, Jacob doesn't know how he should feel about that. 

\---

If he learned nothing else from the Ghost Club and his old friend Charlie Dickens, he knows there's always a logical, rational, scientific explanation for everything he sees - or doesn't see - in the world around him. 

It was like that with the Ripper, back when he was still alive: Jack wasn't superhuman, no matter what the average Londoner might have believed. Jack was just a strongish kind of man, above average but not even the strongest one Jacob had met, with a set of tricks for spreading fear that he'd learned from the Brotherhood in India. He wasn't a monster, either, at least no more than it had turned out Spring-Heeled Jack was; he was just more twisted up and tattered on the inside than Jacob had ever truly realised. He'd believed he'd saved him, but he supposes he's been known to be wrong. 

The thing is, all of that applied when Jack was a living, breathing man out there at large in the world. Now he's dead, there's nothing logical or rational or scientific about it. When Jacob sees him - and he _knows_ he sees him, with just as much certainty as the knowledge that he's dead - there are only two possible explanations. That's something else Jacob's not sure how to feel about, because neither of them strike him as pleasant. 

The first, purely and simply and most straightforwardly: Jacob's lost his mind. It would make sense, he thinks, given everything that's happened. He's caused a lot of people's deaths but none of them were quite like the things that Jack did. He feels responsible, no matter how often he tells himself he's not. So maybe it's guilt, or maybe it's grief, and maybe Lambeth Asylum was the best place for the both of them. The only problem is, he doesn't _feel_ crazy. Evie likes to joke about it, but she doesn't think he is, either. She thinks he's a lot of things, and they're not all good, but 'out of his mind' isn't one of them. She's usually right.

The second: everything he sees is real. And that means Jack's a ghost. 

"Trust me," Jack says, "I don't want to be here any more than you want me here."

Jacob laughs bitterly. He rubs his eyes as if that's going to make him go away; he's almost blind in one of them, Jack saw to that, but he can still see clearly with the other and he sees Jack now. Honestly, without the sackcloth mask, he's almost handsome. He looks like any other man might, like someone you'd pass on the street, in the market, wait next to in a shop. He's everyone, anyone, and his death's made him a legend. He's not a legend to Jacob, though. Honestly, even after everything he did, he's just Jack. 

Jack only ever comes when Jacob's alone. Tonight, he's alone. He's trying to sleep. And Jack sits himself down on the edge of the bed and he sets one big hand down against Jacob's chest. It feels heavy, almost like he's real, except he can see straight through him. Even with all the Assassin skills he's learned over the years, that's not usually true of the people that he meets. 

As Jack starts to stand, Jacob catches his wrist. "I never said I didn't want you here," he says. 

Jack doesn't ask him if that means he does and Jacob doesn't say another word - he pulls him down instead, turns back the sheets and pulls him into bed. Jack's dead, but the weight of his ghost presses Jacob down solidly against the mattress. When he looks up at him, Jack's expression looking back is bitter, but what he doesn't say is no. 

Once upon a time, when they came back home from India, Jacob told himself not fucking his handsome initiate was what a good person would do; it turned out that wasn't exactly the deterrant that it should have been, so he asked himself what Evie would have thought if she'd found out. He imagined the frown on her face, and her disapproving tone, and then he didn't do it. He wonders if maybe he should have. Jack always wanted it, after all. He never knew how to be subtle. Jacob never taught him how. 

Maybe he should have just fucked him. If they'd had too much to drink one night and fallen laughing into bed, maybe that would have been better. He always liked the way Jack looked at him back then, before. Honestly, even once the killing started, the way Jack looked at him didn't change very much. It's the way he's still looking at him now.

When Jacob pulls him down into a kiss, it's just the latest in a long line of mistakes he's made. 

\---

Jack the Ripper is dead. There's only a few people in the world who know that, and Jacob is one of them, but he doesn't _feel_ dead.

Since Jack's death, Jacob's taken back the Rooks and the Assassins still have London. He could live anywhere he wants to, sleep in a big four-poster bed and not in the kind of dingy boarding house where he spent his nights before they took the train from Kaylock. His primary residence is what used to be Crawford Starrick's house, because he thought it made a statement. But sometimes he likes to get away from that and, in a way, the boarding house fits the situation.

He groans out loud as he lets Jack push inside him. In a place like this, no one's going to be scandalised if they hear. 

Jack's dead, but he's not gone. Jacob thinks perhaps that's what they both deserve.


End file.
